Revisiting the 'Tsar Bomba' Nuclear Test (arstechnica.com) 143
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The detonation of the first nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 is seared into our collective memory, and the world has been haunted by the prospect of a devastating nuclear apocalypse ever since. Less well-known but equally significant from a nuclear arms race standpoint was the Soviet Union's successful detonation of a hydrogen "superbomb" in the wee hours of October 30, 1961. Dubbed "Tsar Bomba" (loosely translated, "Emperor of Bombs"), it was the size of a small school bus -- it wouldn't even fit inside a bomber and had to be slung below the belly of the plane. The 60,000-pound (27 metric tons) test bomb's explosive yield was 50 million tons (50 megatons) of TNT, although the design had a maximum explosive yield of 100 million tons (100 megatons).
The US had conducted the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb (codename: Ivy Mike) in 1954 and had been pondering the development of even more powerful hydrogen superbombs. But the Soviets' successful test lent greater urgency to the matter. Ultimately, President John F. Kennedy opted for diplomacy, signing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on October 7, 1963. But US nuclear policy -- and, hence, world history -- might have ended up looking very different, according to Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, released earlier this year. He also maintains the NUKEMAP, an interactive tool that enables users to model the impact of various types of nuclear weapons on the geographical location of their choice.
Wellerstein has analyzed recently declassified documents pertaining to the US response to Tsar Bomba during the Kennedy administration. He described his conclusions in a fascinating article recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the test. [...] According to Wellerstein, the US initially sought to minimize the significance of the Soviets' success, officially dismissing it as a political publicity stunt with little to no technical or strategic importance. But the declassified files revealed that, behind the scenes, US officials took the matter very seriously indeed. Physicist Edward Teller in particular strongly advocated in favor of developing two even more powerful hydrogen bombs, with yields of 1,000 and even 10,000 megatons, respectively. While much of Teller's testimony at a secret meeting on the topic remains classified, Wellerstein found that many scientists who were present expressed shock at his proposal. Concerns about the practical use of such a massive weapon, particularly the widespread nuclear fallout, ultimately scuttled those plans. "I found the new information with regard to the US response to Tsar Bomba really interesting, because it contradicts what they said in public versus what was going on behind the scenes," says Wellerstein. "A lot of the discussions about the Tsar Bomba in American writing essentially parrot then-President Kennedy's line without realizing it: 'Oh, these bombs are worthless. No, they can't do it.' But it's clear that there were people within the Kennedy administration who didn't think it was as simple as that. We can be happy that those people didn't win out."
He added: "There is always this temptation for big bombs. I found a memo by somebody at Sandia, talking about meeting with the military. He said that the military didn't really know what they wanted these big bombs for, but they figured that if the Soviets thought they were a good idea, then the US should have one, too. It's reminiscent of that line from Dr. Strangelove."
Ars Technica sat down with Wellerstein to learn more about the Tsar Bomba test. You can read the full article here.
The US had conducted the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb (codename: Ivy Mike) in 1954 and had been pondering the development of even more powerful hydrogen superbombs. But the Soviets' successful test lent greater urgency to the matter. Ultimately, President John F. Kennedy opted for diplomacy, signing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on October 7, 1963. But US nuclear policy -- and, hence, world history -- might have ended up looking very different, according to Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, released earlier this year. He also maintains the NUKEMAP, an interactive tool that enables users to model the impact of various types of nuclear weapons on the geographical location of their choice.
Wellerstein has analyzed recently declassified documents pertaining to the US response to Tsar Bomba during the Kennedy administration. He described his conclusions in a fascinating article recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the test. [...] According to Wellerstein, the US initially sought to minimize the significance of the Soviets' success, officially dismissing it as a political publicity stunt with little to no technical or strategic importance. But the declassified files revealed that, behind the scenes, US officials took the matter very seriously indeed. Physicist Edward Teller in particular strongly advocated in favor of developing two even more powerful hydrogen bombs, with yields of 1,000 and even 10,000 megatons, respectively. While much of Teller's testimony at a secret meeting on the topic remains classified, Wellerstein found that many scientists who were present expressed shock at his proposal. Concerns about the practical use of such a massive weapon, particularly the widespread nuclear fallout, ultimately scuttled those plans. "I found the new information with regard to the US response to Tsar Bomba really interesting, because it contradicts what they said in public versus what was going on behind the scenes," says Wellerstein. "A lot of the discussions about the Tsar Bomba in American writing essentially parrot then-President Kennedy's line without realizing it: 'Oh, these bombs are worthless. No, they can't do it.' But it's clear that there were people within the Kennedy administration who didn't think it was as simple as that. We can be happy that those people didn't win out."
He added: "There is always this temptation for big bombs. I found a memo by somebody at Sandia, talking about meeting with the military. He said that the military didn't really know what they wanted these big bombs for, but they figured that if the Soviets thought they were a good idea, then the US should have one, too. It's reminiscent of that line from Dr. Strangelove."
Ars Technica sat down with Wellerstein to learn more about the Tsar Bomba test. You can read the full article here.
No there isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
He added: "There is always this temptation for big bombs.
Yeah: big bombs, big cars, big guns, big dicks... Those attracted by those things usually aren't Nobel prize material. The rest of us have a temptation for peace and human development instead.
He said that the military didn't really know what they wanted these big bombs for, but they figured that if the Soviets thought they were a good idea, then the US should have one
Aka "monkey see, monkey do". I wish the monkeys weren't in charge of national security though...
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Yeah: big bombs, big cars, big guns, big dicks... Those attracted by those things usually aren't Nobel prize material.
In order to make that statement with a straight face requires being ignorant of the history of the Nobel prize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The Nobel Prize are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to Mankind." Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist most famously known for the invention of dynamite.
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Indeed. Well said.
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Re:No there isn't (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that something was going to successfully fly a school bus to Manhattan and drop it on us seemed kind of silly in the context of the nuclear hellfire we could rain down from heaven at suborbital velocities.
Re:No there isn't (Score:5, Interesting)
What I suspect scared these military intelligence types shitless was that the development of this bomb exposed a "known unknown", the kind that Donald Rumsfeld talked about in his (in)famous press brief. The Soviets had a really big bomb, that was known. What they didn't know is how the Soviets intended to deploy it. If anything was "silly" about a bomb this big was someone building it without knowing how to deliver it to the target. Because it is silly to make a bomb that was too big to deliver there was the suspicion that the Soviets could put a bomb this big on target.
The USA had the ability to do as much damage as the Tsar Bomba could with many smaller bombs but there was always the suspicion that the Soviets knew something we did not. The surest way to figure out what the Soviets might have known was to reproduce the weapon as close as possible.
The article spent so much effort trying to convey the absurdity of megaton weapons that they forgot to convey the atmosphere of the Cold War. Technology was moving fast at the time, and both the Soviets and Americans were coming up with new shit all the time. In 1903 we saw the first airplane carry a person. In 1961 we had people go into orbit. What might come next was a mystery. Nuclear weapons were still quite new, they didn't even know such a thing was possible 20 years ago. There were a lot of "known unknowns" at the time, and not finding these things out fast enough could have meant the end of the USA. At least that was a "known known" at the time. They knew such a bomb was possible at the time, it would take some time for the absurdity of such a weapon to sink in.
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I don't buy that argument.
It's well made, but I don't think it adds up.
Nuclear weapons were certainly new technology, and so were rockets. Planes weren't so much, but that doesn't matter.
What was well known were the rocket equations, and Newton's laws of motion.
One look at the Tsar Bomba would have yielded the conclusion,
"Well, that thing is definitely not going on a missile. It's plane delivered."
From that, would follow the logic,
"How relevant is a weapon that must be deployed by pla
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The USSR had planned to deliver it via ICBM, specifically the vehicle that became the Proton rocket.
The other purpose of the test was to prove the theory that there was no real limit to the size of nuclear weapons. By developing multi-stage nuclear explosions the size can be increased indefinitely, the only limitation being the weight of the bomb limiting delivery options.
A single bomb of that size could have destroyed very large cities. It meant that targeting was not so critical and that only one weapon n
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The USSR had planned to deliver it via ICBM, specifically the vehicle that became the Proton rocket.
I don't know whether that is true or not, but they could have planned it to their heart's content. They were decades away from that kind of launch capability.
Tsar Bomba weighed 27 metric tons.
For it to be an ICBM, they needed a delta-v of ~5,700 m/sec.
The biggest Proton ever made couldn't push more than about 4 metric tons to that velocity.
They could lob the things at France all day long, I suppose.
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Proton-K could put nearly 23 tonnes into LEO, so could probably have coped with 27 tonnes sub-orbital.
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You're right that the UR-500 (later, Proton-K) could have put a Tsar Bomba into LEO. Or even suborbital LEO where it would have fallen back to earth, but throw-weight is calculated for ballistic trajectories, and for the UR-500, it was about 9-12t estimated.
for the Tsar Bomba, it would have needed a throw weight of 28t+ (RVs require a lot more weight than a bomb)
You're looking at an N-1 (if they'd ever gotten it to work) or or a Saturn V.
The Soviets thought th
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The USSR had planned to deliver it via ICBM, specifically the vehicle that became the Proton rocket.
Not really. This is after the fact speculation about what they might/could have done, not a report of any actual plans that we know about.
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silly in the context of the nuclear hellfire we could rain down from heaven at suborbital velocities.
say what?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
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The R7 was never operationally deployed. The R7-A was, though only 1 ever had a nuclear warhead on it. The weapons weren't "operational" in the sense that you'd think, and required a 12-18 hour lead-time for arming and launch.
The R-16 was the first real ICBM operationally deployed by the Soviets, which could be launched in ~20 minutes.
The first missile went live a month after the Tsar Bomba dropped, while at the time the US already had ~60 missiles operational within minutes.
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Well don't you live in a nice cozy little world. I bet you have all your participation awards all across the wall behind you and on all the shelves in the room.
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Space is a vacumn so shock waves dont travel well. You would have to drill and put the bomb inside the rock
Space is problematic because the vast majority of energy is radiated away from your target for a surface explosion.
The asteroid itself will absorb the fraction of energy emitted toward it very well, and shock waves will travel through it fantastically.
With a large enough weapon, concerns over how efficient the radial distribution of energy is becomes moot.
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That's scientific thinking. All bombs work by expanding - applying huge pressure on the target in a short amount of time. That doesn't work so well in space. It would do some damage, though, but nothing like in the Hollywood movies. I guess many people think we would hear a huge explosion here on Earth... you wouldn't hear anything. ;) If we could build a rocket that first somehow drills into the asteroid as deep as it can and then detonate, that's quite another story. However, a huge explosion could deflec
Re:Vaporising killer asteroids? (Score:5, Informative)
However, might it not be a potential defence against a mass extinction asteroid impact?
The key to deflecting an asteroid is not to hit it hard but to hit it early. If we detect an asteroid that will impact in a year, then a small warhead, such as a 150 kg W88, that can be launched in a week is better than a bus-sized bomb that will take a few months.
Research suggests that regular nuclear missiles would not be able to deflect or destroy huge space rocks hurtling towards our planet
What research? Citation needed.
Re:Vaporising killer asteroids? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vaporising killer asteroids? (Score:5, Informative)
It would probably be better to send multiple kinetic kill vehicles rather that nukes. Well, in this case they wouldn't be killing it, just adjusting it's course slightly.
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Oh my god. Not this bullshit again. If a asteroid was headed to earth and we detected if far enough out, we would use nuclear demolitions to ether alter its orbit or reduce it to small enough parts that they no longer propose a threat. We would not paint it white, or use "gravity tugs", or any kind of "kinetic kill vehicles."
You know why we would nuclear demolitions on it? Because its what we have. It's all we have. By the time we detected it we would not have time to "play" with experimental techn
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The key to deflecting an asteroid is not to hit it hard but to hit it early. If we detect an asteroid that will impact in a year, then a small warhead, such as a 150 kg W88, that can be launched in a week is better than a bus-sized bomb that will take a few months.
The US policy for nuclear response is to use smaller, more accurate warheads than one huge one. You can do far more damage with several smaller warheads than you can with one huge one.
This would hold up in asteroid defense. The Tsar Bomba weighed 27,000 kg, where a W88 tops out at 360kg. For the weight of one Tsar Bomba, you can send 75, W88s. Many smaller nuclear charges used with precision will be far more effective than one huge one.
Re:Vaporising killer asteroids? (Score:5, Interesting)
The best defense against an ELE (extinction level event) size asteroid is to deflect it, not break it into little bits. A large asteroid broken up into a meteor shower can still heat up the atmosphere to the point of being an ELE. Breaking up a large asteroid can still create smaller, non-ELE, rocks on unknown trajectories that could end up slamming into populated areas. A big rock hitting water can create a tsunami that would devastate coastal areas. Because there's no air in space to carry a shock wave a nuclear blast isn't likely to divert it much. Maybe a "bunker buster" type bomb could bury itself before detonating, the resulting ejected debris could then create a kind of rocket burst to redirect the asteroid. Maybe a blast could slow it down, or even speed it up, so the Earth and asteroid are no longer on a collision course. There's been professional and amateur scientists that debated this often since the movies Armageddon and Deep Impact were in the theaters. A common theme is how it would be a bad idea to blow it up.
A big problem is just getting anything to hit the asteroid, that's a tiny target in a big space. Putting rockets on the asteroid to point it in another direction would be really hard. What I recall to be the most viable method is to get a space probe really close, close enough that the probe and asteroid would be attracted by gravity. The probe would then fire rockets to keep from falling into the asteroid, and this constant firing of a tiny rocket would slowly divert the asteroid from Earth's path. A small "nudge" on the rock while far enough from Earth would make it miss. To make sure it doesn't orbit the sun and come around to be a threat again it could be aimed at another planet. Chemical rockets are not likely to be efficient enough for this to work. They'd have to use nuclear or solar powered rockets.
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Because there's no air in space to carry a shock wave a nuclear blast isn't likely to divert it much.
Yep. Hitting it with a "bomb" is no different than simply hitting it with a big chunk of metal.
The best defense would be to start accumulating big chunks of metal in orbit, ready to be sent towards asteroids.
"I found the new information with regard to the US response to Tsar Bomba really interesting, because it contradicts what they said in public versus what was going on behind the scenes," says Wellerstein.
Says somebody who grew up under a rock and never saw the government do a single thing, ever.
Is memory too short to remember things like the way Colin Powell lied in congress to get the Iraq invasion going? Yeah, that worked out well.
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Joce640k sneered:
Is memory too short to remember things like the way Colin Powell lied in congress to get the Iraq invasion going? Yeah, that worked out well.
Powell didn't lie to Congress. He did testify to the UN about Iraqi efforts to build a nuclear weapon - but he didn't intentionally lie. Instead, he repeated false intelligence information that was given to him by Douglas Feith of Dick Cheney's private disinformation operation.
When Powell discovered he'd been duped into misleading the UN, he immediately resigned as Secretary of State.
Colin Powell was a good and failthful servant of the Constitution. He proved that by resigning the highest n
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Landing shouldn't be too hard, there have been two landings out of two attempts on asteroids and one bounced landing on a comet. Two out of three ain't bad.
A nuclear rocket, of the sort Carl Sagan described in his series Cosmos, might possibly work if it was early enough. I can't imagine any chemical rocket delivering sufficient thrust. A small deflection many orbits prior to impact could potentially result in the gravitational pull from the sun or one of the gas giants increasing by enough to substantially
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I should have been more clear. The hard part is landing a rocket in the right spot. The rock will likely be spinning, and oddly shaped. Finding a spot that can keep the rocket pointed in a useful spot would be hard. If you want a chunk of the rock for taking home them landing most anywhere will do. If you want to put a rocket on it to make it go somewhere then you need to find center of gravity, someplace solid, and not wobbling and spinning so your rocket is inefficient.
Maybe they could lasso it inste
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At 50 MT if it detonated on or near impact, it would vapourize much of anything smaller than a few kms wide. And while doing that, it would create its own atmosphere of vapourized rock that could transmit a pretty big shock as it expands, even in space. Any chunks that were still around would be diverted likely as good as hitting it with with something smaller with the sole intent of changing its direction.
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The best defense against an ELE (extinction level event) size asteroid is to deflect it, not break it into little bits.
I agree, the best option to deal with ELE is to deflect it. That is actually very easy to do. All you have to do is alter the mass of the incoming threat with enough nuclear demolitions and let orbital mechanics do the rest. It is really that simple.
But I want your option on breaking it up in to smaller piece. I think that is a viable option and want your feed back on it. I've noticed that when people think of breaking it up, we are going to take a rock the size of a city and turn it into smaller roc
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That will still heat up the atmosphere, and if big enough then this will produce enough heat for an ELE.
Has there been any research on this? Has anyone done the math? I understand your point but I don't think it would be that bad. Also a great deal of the impact debris would probably miss earth.
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That will still heat up the atmosphere, and if big enough then this will produce enough heat for an ELE.
Actually, no it won't. It is not the heating of the atmosphere will not be the problem. It's the cooling.
Most meteorites burn up in the mesosphere layer, or about 40 to 90 KM above the Troposphere. That little if any heat from the event will reach the troposhere with most of it being radiated back out into space.
The real issue will be the dust and ash. Even though all the debris from the asteroid has been burned away so it no longer poses a danger as a impactor, still it is all in the upper atmosph
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Well, considering that Tsar Bomba was ALREADY the size of a grain silo (24 feet by 6 feet wide), even with ever-better miniaturization, at some point it doesn't make sense to try and drop-ship a WHOLE FUCKING BUILDING to nuke a location.
Especially, when the physical dynamics of such a blast cease to render such an event significantly more damaging than simply clustering a bunch of smaller munitions.
Investment into more advanced delivery systems that can deliver anywhere with accuracy is more important that
Wee Hours? (Score:4, Interesting)
In TFS, they say they detonated it in the "wee hours" of October 30, 1961. Does the author know what "wee hours" means?
Usually, it means the small (or "wee") hours early after midnight, i.e. 1:00 A.M. to, presumably, dawn which is sometime around 5 A.M. depending on where you live, time of year, etc.
Now, the historical description of the test says it was detonated at 11:30 AM. AM? That's a half hour before noon, DEFINITELY NOT "wee hours" by any stretch of the imagination, not even the "wee hours" of the afternoon, which doesn't exist, but if it did, it would be from 1:00 P.M. to probably dusk, around 5 P.M, but no one uses that expression, but even if they did, 11:30 A.M. does NOT qualify.
Even the video of the drop clearly shows it's daylight outside, not night time. "wee hours"?
I don't think so!
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It's "wee hours" in another timezone... A lot of people don't consider the fact that the earth is round and has different timezones.
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I took the "wee hours" as when they took off for a distant drop zone far away from the military base so as they would not see the fallout in populated areas. Many hours out, get there about noon to drop the bomb, then many hours back so they can still land before dark. I could be mistaken. Someone is mistaken.
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Your guess probably makes the most sense, it's possible they were a 10-11 hour plane ride from civilization to get far enough away to be drop in a "safe" place away from populated areas. They were using propeller driven bombers back then, so they were fairly slow as far as planes go.
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They were using propeller driven bombers back then, so they were fairly slow as far as planes go.
The Tu-95 is slower than it's contemporary B52 but still surprisingly fast. About 75mph slower at top and cruising speeds.
Big Boom Diminishing Returns (Score:3)
I always thought that it was well understood that there was an inverse relationship between the yield of a nuclear weapon and the damage it would do. For example two 25-megatonne bombs would wipe out more enemy area than one 50-megatonne bomb. But this summation doesn't show anywhere in this article.
Also, aside from the we-got-a-bigger-dick type of military PR, the Soviet motive for larger bombs was that they didn't trust the accuracy of their delivery systems. So they wanted something powerful enough that if they were off by a couple of miles then no bigge the primary target would still be destroyed. Recently I mentioned this to an expert in the field and she said that really wasn't the case, but instead that was useful we-got-a-better-dick type of military PR.
Those were insane times. Amazing we lived through it.
Re:Big Boom Diminishing Returns (Score:4, Informative)
I always thought that it was well understood that there was an inverse relationship between the yield of a nuclear weapon and the damage it would do.
A 2/3 power law. Destructive area is the yield to the 2/3 power.
Big bombs produce more destruction, but it's less than proportional to yield: diminishing returns.
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Broken arrows (Score:3)
Regarding nuclear weapon accidents (broken arrows) there are 32 documented [atomicarchive.com].
I am sure there was all kinds of shit that never made the funny pages just because crap happens everywhere and why would the military's handling of nuclear weapons be any different.
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Here's just what's made it to the open literature:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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About 20 years ago it came out that British nuclear bombs were only protected by a basic padlock. Anyone who could get past a padlock, e.g. a small child, could arm and detonate them.
British submarine commanders also have the ability to launch their nuclear SLBMs without any outside assistance, i.e. no nuclear codes like the US has to prevent unauthorized use. The Royal Navy's attitude is that it's crews are beyond reproach and totally trustworthy.
Generally speaking the US is a bit of an anomaly when it com
Re:Big Boom Diminishing Returns (Score:5, Interesting)
British submarine commanders also have the ability to launch their nuclear SLBMs without any outside assistance, i.e. no nuclear codes like the US has to prevent unauthorized use. The Royal Navy's attitude is that it's crews are beyond reproach and totally trustworthy.
Second strike capability is a key part of the deterrent. The general idea is that even if you completely destroy your target, you still suffer costs so high it's not worth it. MAD and all that. For MAD logic to apply, you must be able to hit back no matter what. I think part of the logic is that the UK is so small it could be blanketed with bombs. If the USSR were to have struck hard enough fast enough they could have knocked out enough of the command and control system that no one could communicate codes to the subs.
So they had to be fully autonomous for MAD to work.
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I can't vouch for the accuracy of their claims, but I have spoken to a former nuclear bomber pilot who assured me that the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't even close to being close to the worst of the close calls.
We can assume he wouldn't have known the strategic situation because that would be classified and the military follows a Need To Know policy. Therefore we can assume he wouldn't have any information relating to actual chains of cause to effect or any deliberations by the higher-ups. As such, it's perfe
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I always thought that it was well understood that there was an inverse relationship between the yield of a nuclear weapon and the damage it would do.
Pretty much, this is why everyone went MERVs. It's better to get multiple, target-able warheads onto one missile than one big ass warhead. But in 1961 the arms race was still evolving rapidly. In the 50's and 60's both sides came up with some really weird ideas, only to scrap them in short order when advancements rendered them quickly obsolete. Or they were just plain bonkers. The history of military tech from the end of WWII up through the 60's is littered with some just crazy ass developments.
MERVs? (Score:5, Funny)
(pushing glasses up on nose bridge with finger)
Merv Griffin, the ancient talk show host and media mogul?
Merv, the ancient city in Turkmenistan?
MERV air filter rating?
Merv, the guy who sold me my sofa?
or MIRV, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle?
Probably MIRV [wikipedia.org]
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Merv Griffin, the ancient talk show host and media mogul?
Heeeere's MIRV! [youtube.com]
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Merv Griffin, the Elevator Killer. [youtube.com]
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Thank you both!
So obscure; so funny.
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Exactly. Inverse square for flash damage, inverse cube for overpressure. Make the bomb larger and more of the energy goes into making ground zero hotter, which is not practically useful even in a destructive sense.
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Far more efficient in terms of destruction per pound accelerated to suborbital velocity.
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I always thought that it was well understood that there was an inverse relationship between the yield of a nuclear weapon and the damage it would do.
Nuclear weapons were still new then, there were still a lot of things that were not understood.
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Nuclear weapons were developed by physicists. They were perfectly capable of understanding the fairly simple geometric principles behind multiple smaller bombs being more effective than one large one. It doesn't just apply to nuclear weapons and all it takes is modeling your target as a plane and the explosions as spheres. Yes, that's an oversimplified model, but it still works if you model the target as an area on a much larger sphere as well, etc. There are a lot more factors to model to get something mor
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Nuclear weapons were developed by physicists. They were perfectly capable of understanding the fairly simple geometric principles behind multiple smaller bombs being more effective than one large one.
Perhaps there were other factors besides physics involved. There could be economic reasons. If one big bomb can do more damage for less cost than a bunch of smaller bombs then that makes the case for one big bomb. There could be military strategy reasons for a big bomb. The fine article mentioned one possible use for this class of weapon as a "bunker buster". Given the magnitude of these weapons I'd consider "earthquake bomb" as more accurate. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) These would be dropp
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Perhaps there were other factors besides physics involved. There could be economic reasons. If one big bomb can do more damage for less cost than a bunch of smaller bombs then that makes the case for one big bomb. There could be military strategy reasons for a big bomb. The fine article mentioned one possible use for this class of weapon as a "bunker buster". Given the magnitude of these weapons I'd consider "earthquake bomb" as more accurate. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) These would be dropped from considerable altitude so they'd be supersonic on impact, heavily armored to penetrate deep, then detonated to destroy fortifications.
That wasn't really what my post was about though. I was responding specifically to your assertion that, at the time, they may not have understood that multiple smaller bombs do more damage than a big bomb with the same yield. Any physicist would understand that easily. There may well have been other reasons for one big bomb, although it's still considerably bigger than what you would normally need for a bunker buster. It blew up 4 km up and still created a 100 m deep crater. Burrowing into the ground would
"it contradicts what they said in public" (Score:2)
i.e., business as usual.
For the record... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Ivy MIke test was November 1, 1952:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Just days before the Eisenhower-Stevenson presidential election, as it turns out.
2) The Tu-95 rules ! Four god-fearing turboprops, they may have been louder than the Tsar Bomba explosion. And it's still in service. Hats off to its designers and those of the B-52.
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The TU-95 Rules?
It's the only plane that didn't need radar to be tracked, it was tracked by SOSUS.
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-tr... [quora.com]
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That's a fact ! Bears are loud creatures.
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After the experience was over and my brain started processing information again, I could only laugh hysterically.
That plane is way too large to move that fast.
I figure if they ever can't drop the bombs, they could probably take out NORAD with a nosedive at full throttle.
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The B1-B is is quite small and slow compared to say the TU-160 or Concorde.
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The B1-B is is quite small and slow compared to say the TU-160 or Concorde.
No, the B1-B is very close in size to the TU-160 (that's no coincidence ;)
As for slow- yes, the maximum top speed of a B1-B is slower than that of a TU-160, however it has a higher thrust/weight ratio. This means it accelerates faster.
Not terribly useful for a bomber trying to get from point-a to point-b, but very fun for flybys.
The B1-A had a comparable top speed to the TU-160, but it was sacrificed for the -B variant for stealth and penetration capabilities that the TU-160 does not have.
Concorde is f
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For mass produced, sure. But for one offs...
Imagine, it was the early 1950s. Supersonic flight was the new hotness, but jets were well, new fangled and not all that great. After a good deal of chin-scratching (and maybe a CIA-sponsored test of LSD in the water supply) someone though "what if we made a supersonic plane... but with a propeller".
And so this towering monstrosity was born:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
History Repeats (Score:3)
"He said that the military didn't really know what they wanted these big bombs for, but they figured that if the Soviets thought they were a good idea, then the US should have one, too"
Switch "US" and "Soviets" and that pretty much sums up why the Soviets built their own Space Shuttle.
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And their own SDI, which in turn caused the original Soviet Union to go bankrupt.
(The Soviet Space Shuttle might actually have been safer and more reliable than the US version, although as it was never actually used, that's forever going to be in the realms of supposition.)
Ridiculous. (Score:4, Insightful)
What they were saying behind the scenes was lobbying for more funds.
The Tsar Bomba was almost impossible to deliver for first strikes. It's 60,000 pounds and could only be carried by subsonic bombers at the time.
This was understood.
In terms of counterforce it's much less effective than more smaller, more accurate bombs directed at the targets.
This was already well know. Teller bless his heart, never shied away from bigger and crazier and he was the grandmaster at using fear to win national security arguments. When you think about him, you have to remember he was the guy who pushed for sub launched nuclear bomb pumped gamma ray lasers as a missile defense system.
This whole thing is a good example of how history doesn't get written but gets distorted.
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I think of Teller as a nerd. Fascinated by technology, always wanting to build something cool, completely unaware of the problems caused by his interpersonal skills.
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I don't disagree. He was certainly brilliant, but I wouldn't write down his interpersonal skills. He cut off Oppenheimer at the knees, and managed to maintain a preeminent place in the national security complex for 50 years.
My opprobrium isn't directed at him, even though the pop up defense was nutty, it was just the opposite of the people who said missile defense was impossible and undesirable. The article deserves ire. It's just ongoing historical revisionism, not unlike a few years ago "Historians" tried
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I wouldn't write down his interpersonal skills. He cut off Oppenheimer at the knees
Rather, other people cut down Oppenheimer, using Teller as a "useful idiot" along the way.
Cause/reaction (Score:2)
Given that Dr. Strangelove came out three years after the Tsar Bomba, I would say Dr. Strangelove is reminiscent of what we now know happened.
Especially given Stanley Kubrick's involvement.
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Some of the dialog is taken verbatim from Herman Kahn's On Thermonuclear War. He did not need to exaggerate or invent.
The real Dr. Strangelove (Score:5, Informative)
US officials took the matter very seriously indeed. Physicist Edward Teller in particular strongly advocated in favor of developing two even more powerful hydrogen bombs, with yields of 1,000 and even 10,000 megatons,
Edward Teller was fucking madman [scientificamerican.com] and consistently gave the worst possible advices to all the presidents he talked to. It's a small wonder that the world is still in one piece with that guy whispering into the ear of the most powerful men in history.
He was the second choice (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that Edward Teller was the second choice to lead the development of the hydrogen bomb.
The number one choice was Hans Bethe, but he refused to work on this project arguing that the kiloton fission bombs were alreay powerful enough and that the megaton hydrogen bombs were not needed.
Teller was alway obsessed that he coud not do as good a job as Bethe and in the end the design he came up with was mostly the work of Stanislaw Ulam. See how he treated Ulam after the design proved successful.
In order to compensate, he took the easy route of pushing for "bigger is better"
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Edward Teller never led the development of the hydrogen bomb. He wanted to, but was never considered for the role since he was famously difficult to work with and was a poor team lead at Los Alamos. He also made a lot of demands on how things must be done and in the end refused to participate at all in the Mike development when those demands were not met. Marshall Holloway was led the development (Richard Garwin did the preliminary design), Teller had no involvement, he spent his time instead agitating (suc
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Maybe a "fucking madman" served a useful purpose. Anyone that far out there is recognized as such by others and serves as a visible signpost to where we shouldn't go (i.e. that's "madman territory"). It's also possible that his extreme views counterbalanced extreme conciliatory advice resembling Nigel Chamberlain's "appeasement" position that signaled Hitler that nothing he wanted to do would be opposed.
It's not like he was the only one advising our political leaders, as they no doubt had a variety of advic
No fuckin' way (Score:2)
equally significant [to the Nagasaki/Hiroshima bombs] from a nuclear arms race standpoint was the Soviet Union's successful detonation of a hydrogen "superbomb" in the wee hours of October 30, 1961
There is no way they are equally significant. That is journalistic laziness.
I... love this stuff (Score:3)
It's absolutely fascinating, and I'm enthralled. I feel that way about all military hardware, ancient or brand new.
I'm not particularly drawn to violence. I think of atrocities the way one would expect - they're atrocious. It's in the name. I care about people in general, and I do my part specifically.
But... big shiny bomb make jaw dropping boom! My knuckles drag on the ground, my forehead shrinks back, and I can't look away.
It's primal.
A testimony to the psychopaths in both countries (Score:2)
No sane person ever would want such things. But the psycho cave-men all too often put in charge desire them above anything else.
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No sane person ever would want such things. But the psycho cave-men all too often put in charge desire them above anything else.
I don't know.
On one hand, I get where you're coming from.
On the other hand, we live in the Pax Americana. It's been 80 years since a major conflict between Great Powers. Back in 1960, it had only been 15 years, and we were about due for another. Sane people don't want to be steamrolled by an enemy. Sane people do seek deterrents.
Now this isn't to say that everyone involved in making bigger and bigger bombs were sane, but the strategy of developing weapons so scary that someone wouldn't dream of knocking
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Now this isn't to say that everyone involved in making bigger and bigger bombs were sane, but the strategy of developing weapons so scary that someone wouldn't dream of knocking you over... doesn't seem insane to me.
It does seem utterly insane to me. Probably because I am an engineer and understand that technological systems _do_ fail and that the consequences of that failure must always be limited to acceptable levels. They are not limited to that for nuclear weapon systems. In an accident, with an US or Russian city now glowing in the dark, the side hit will not wait to find out what happened, it will instead end the human race. We just have gotten _very_ lucky until now and that is not an acceptable approach, given
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Probably because I am an engineer and understand that technological systems _do_ fail and that the consequences of that failure must always be limited to acceptable levels.
I'm an engineer too, but I think your analysis is lacking.
They are not limited to that for nuclear weapon systems. In an accident, with an US or Russian city now glowing in the dark, the side hit will not wait to find out what happened, it will instead end the human race.
Yes. This is a terrible reality of the situation.
The alternate reality, is that one side does not build the weapons, and trusts on its definition of sanity for the other side.
In this scenario, there's no risk of accident or ending the human race- just a virtual guarantee of the ending of your own side of the chess board.
We just have gotten _very_ lucky until now and that is not an acceptable approach, given what is at stake.
We sure have. MAD is terrible. But it beats the alternative.
At least they got one thing right by calling the paradigm MAD.
They sure the hell did, and they knew that.
But they were faced with a
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That presupposes that there is no alternative to MAD. That absolutely no other deterrent could possibly succeed, including deterrents we've not yet thought of because there was no need to think of them because we already had MAD. I think I'm going to have to ask for a citation, signed in triplicate by a passing Time Lord or Slider capable of actually verifying any claims for any alternative future.
Otherwise, the best you can say is that MAD beats the alternatives politicians have actually conceptualised and
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The nature of the deterrent isn't relevant. It could be entirely conventional. It's merely nuclear because that's the most reasonable way to completely destroy an adversary.
The deterrent is the promise that in return for our absolute destruction, yours is equally guaranteed.
The only alternative to MAD, is a way to remove the ability for absolute destruction.
This leaves disarmament, and a missile shield.
Neither are being held back by the existence of MAD. They'r
Why? (Score:2)
Seriously, the Tsar Bomba was already too big to be very useful for any military objective. I'm reminded of final moments of the film "beneath the planet of the apes" where they detonate a doomsday device out of spite.
Trinity and Beyond, the Atomic Bomb Movie. (Score:2)
It's worth it guys, narrated by Shatner, wonderful music, just fantastic. If you love nukes (I love nukes!!) it's wonderful. Very beautiful and horrific all at once. Hell of a movie.
Tsar Bomba is in there too. Great stuff.
If the Soviets had one, so should the US (Score:2)
you have it backward. (Score:5, Insightful)
"...It's reminiscent of that line from Dr. Strangelove...."
You don't think that maybe the writer of Dr Strangelove was directly, consciously, and deliberately parroting the conversations that we all knew were taking place?
Tsar Bomba was an ineffective weapon (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't find it right now, but I read an article a while back that discussed the Tsar Bomba and its effects in some detail, and concluded that it didn't see further development because it wasn't very effective.
The problem is that when you release that much energy at one point, an enormous percentage of it ends up just being blasted into space. To a blast that powerful, the bottom layers of the atmosphere are nearly as "solid" as the ground, which causes the bulk of the energy to be bounced in the direction of least resistance: the low-density air and eventually vacuum above. Increasing yields still further would have produced ever-diminishing effects on ground targets that didn't justify the increased size, weight, cost and complexity, while smaller weapons that aren't capable of blasting a tunnel through the stratosphere direct more of their energy at the stuff you want to destroy.
Basically, it appears that for terrestrial use there is a sort of a "sweet spot" for H-bomb size, and it's smaller than the Tsar Bomba, not greater. Much smaller. Nuclear weapons instead evolved in the direction of many smaller warheads, each with yields of only a fraction of a megaton. If massive destruction is your goal, it works better to shower many mid-sized nukes over your enemy's cities, rather than making fewer slightly-larger craters.
As a political statement Tsar Bomba was very effective. But as a weapon, not so much.
If nuclear warfare moves to space or to airless planets, the dynamics of yield effectiveness will change. In space, there are no blast or thermal effects at all, just a massive omnidirectional wave of radiation. In that case, the goal of a nuclear weapon is to deliver lethal radiation to the target, exceeding the ability of any shielding to stop it, and bigger would be better as long as friendly forces (or desirable enemy real estate that you don't wish to render radioactive for eons) are far enough away not to be affected.
On an airless surface it's much the same, except for the energy delivered downward, into the surface. That will be a very small fraction of the total, but that fraction will not vary much with yield, so it would make sense to keep cranking up the yield until the desirable level of subsurface damage is achieved. Though even there I wonder if it would be more effective to use a sequence of smaller bombs to "dig" downward into, say, a subsurface complex. The deepening crater will enable greater amounts of the energy to be directed into the surface in the form of blast and heat, while radiation would be less effective because massive shielding would be feasible.
Hopefully we'll give up our warlike ways before we move into space in a significant way, and no one will research the best way to nuke people off-planet. I'm not holding my breath.
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We would have to engage in a futile first strike.
What
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We would have to engage in a futile first strike.
What
Nuclear winter. The US would have destroyed it self pretty thoroughly. Along with the rest of the world. Of course, the madmen behind the nuclear fanaticism did not know that back then.
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Why do you think the US would have to engage in a first strike?
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Why do you think the US would have to engage in a first strike?
Have you looked at the historical records? It gets amply explained there. Just to cater (to a limited degree) to your laziness: The approximate reasoning was that if there were Soviet missiles on Cuba, the USSR could destroy the US offensive capability in less time than the US would take to get a strike underway. Hence they would have to do a preventative strike to prevent the stationing of missiles on Cuba. Whether this reasoning is actually accurate is debatable, but it was the strategic thinking among th
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Have you looked at the historical records? It gets amply explained there.
I've read a lot about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but there's a lot to read.
And there was still the US bomber-fleet that was kept armend an in the air (I think, not sure it was already done at the time of the Cuba crisis).
I don't think the bomber fleet was there at the time, but the US did already have nuclear missiles in Turkey and Italy ready to hit the USSR.
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And there was still the US bomber-fleet that was kept armend an in the air (I think, not sure it was already done at the time of the Cuba crisis).
I don't think the bomber fleet was there at the time, but the US did already have nuclear missiles in Turkey and Italy ready to hit the USSR.
That _should_ have invalidated the whole argument. Also, the USSR did the whole Cuba thing probably at least in part because of these missiles in Europe, which makes the whole thing even more extremely stupid.
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I don't think the bomber fleet was there at the time, but the US did already have nuclear missiles in Turkey and Italy ready to hit the USSR.
The U.S. bomber fleet was "there" from about 1950 on, first with the deployment of the B-36, the replacement of which by the B-52 began in 1956. The Chrome Dome "bomb's in the air" flight operation, in which nuclear armed bombers were always in flight, began in the late 1950s and during the Cuban Missile Crisis the number of Chrome Dome flights was sharply increased.
The U.S. had more than 100 Atlas (mostly) and Titan I ICBMs in service in the U.S. at the time, only 45 Jupiters in Italy and Turkey.
Bombers we
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